EXAM 1 STUDY GUIDE
Music 3500: American Music
50 questions--each question is worth 4 points (for a maximum of 200 possible points
toward your final course grade total).
The format of the test will be:
...Matching
...Multiple Choice
...True/False (from text readings, class lectures, YouTube video links)
General study recommendations:
- Do the online quiz assignments for Chapters 1, 2 and 3
Know the definitions of Important Terms for
- Chapter 1 (textbook, page 4—The Elements of Music; terms at the bottom of that page)
- Chapter 2 (textbook, pages 17-18)
- Chapter 3 (textbook, pages 28-29)
Be able to match a person to their musical style, or a brief description of the person that
includes their musical style (as done on quizzes 2 and 3)
- Delta Blues: Robert Johnson
- Classic Blues: Bessie Smith
- Early Gospel Music: The Soul Stirrers
- Early Country & Western: Jimmie Rodgers, Gene Autry, Bob Wills
- Bluegrass: Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs
- Broadway: Rodgers and Hammerstein
- Tin Pan Alley: Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Bing Crosby
- Dance Musicals: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
- Folk Music: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger
- Animated Film: Walt Disney
- Hot Jazz: Louis Armstrong
- Big-Band Jazz: Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman
- "Jump" Blues/early R & B: Louis Jordan
- Bebop: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie
- Traditional Art Music: Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber
- Experimental Art-Music: Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Edgard Varese, John Cage
Know which decade the following music technologies came from:
- 1920s: AM radio, electric microphone, 78-RPM records, movies with sound
- 1930s: Stereo (2-channel) recording and playback
- 1940s: FM radio, 33-RPM stereo LP records, 45-RPM singles, commercial TV, reel-toreel tape recording
Know the dates of these major US events:
1917-18: US enters World War I
1919: Prohibition (18th Amendment)
1920: US Women get the right to vote (19th Amendment)
1929: The Stock Market crash that initiated the Great Depression
1941-45: US fights in World War II
Know the following:
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR): The only US President elected to four consecutive
terms
- Theodore Roosevelt: Oversaw the US expansion to 48 states, and the completion of the
Panama Canal
- Flappers: Radical young US women in the 1920s who smoked, and had short bobbed
hair and relatively short skirts
Music Examples to Study: These will be used as the basis for
- Five multiple-choice "Listening Identification" questions, and
- A set of questions for matching a person to a musical work
Examples for Roots music
Folk Song
Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land (1940)
Examples for Popular Music 1900-29
Ragtime piano music
Scott Joplin: The Entertainer (1902)
"Delta" Blues (Commercial Blues)
Robert Johnson: "Cross Road Blues" (1936)—see lyrics
Jazz:
- Dixieland Jazz: Louis Armstrong: Hotter Than That (1927)
- Big Band Swing: Duke Ellington: It Don't Mean a Thing If It
Ain't Got That Swing (1931)
-­‐ Bebop: Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie: Koko (1945)
Jump Blues (early R & B) Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five: Caldonia (1945) Early "Country & Western" Music
Jimmie Rodgers: "Blue Yodel No. 8--Muleskinner Blues" (1930)—see lyrics
Country & Western Music
Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys: New San Antonio Rose
(1944)--"Western Swing"
Broadway Musicals
Kern and Hammerstein: "Ol' Man River" from Showboat
(1927)—see lyrics
Rodgers & Hammerstein: "Some Enchanted Evening" from
South Pacific (1949)
Examples for Classical Art-Music Music 1900-29
Charles Ives: The Unanswered Question (1908)
Henry Cowell: The Banshee (1925)
Aaron Copland: "Simple Gifts" from Appalachian Spring (1944)-Ballet
John Cage: "The Perilous Night" from Sonatas for Prepared Piano
(1948)